After the last week of play, eight teams remain standing in a battle for a prize pool of 100,000 USD. Let's recap what happened and take a look at the upcoming schedule.
If you care about competitive Overwatch, chances are you tuned in to the ESL Atlantic Showdown regional qualifiers that ran all of last week. Four teams each qualified from Europe and North America to make for eight teams ready to put it all on the line at Gamescom on August 20-21.
A recap of the last week of play
Over in Europe, REUNITED ran through their half of the bracket. In what most would have expected to be a difficult path, REUNITED dropped only a single map to melty eSports, while defeating Creation eSports 3-0 to qualify for a top seed at Gamescom. Joining them was Misfits, who took a solid 3-1 victory against Luminosity's new squad, and followed that up with a very close series against Rogue that went down to the wire. The next two seeds were determined by lower bracket finalists. Rogue took down ANOX 3-0 before their defeat against Misfits, but bounced back by trouncing the new Ninjas in Pyjamas squad 3-0 in order to qualify. Likewise, Creation stomped the surging ANOX—who managed to make it all the way to the lower bracket semifinals after falling early—in order to take the last spot for Europe.
North America had at least one obvious candidate for Gamescom. Team EnVyUs made it all the way through the regional qualifiers without dropping a single map. While their semifinal match against Team Solomid got a bit dicey on Dorado, EnVyUs was still solid enough to take home a 3-0. The other side of the bracket was far more interesting, starting with the second ranked team: Cloud9. After taking a solid (but hard-fought) victory against Team Liquid, Cloud9 dropped two maps to Fnatic before completing a reverse sweep in the semifinals to take the second top seed. Fnatic, who dominated both Splyce and the newly-formed NRG, fell to the lower bracket, but qualified easily after defeating a relatively surprising team ohno. After dropping to EnVyUs, Team Solomid came out strong against a much-improved Team Liquid and qualified off the back of a 3-1 victory.
Looking forward
The format of Gamescom is not completely set in stone regarding seeds, but we do know that teams will be broken into two groups featuring a pair of NA and EU teams each, meaning that we will receive the maximum amount of cross-region rivalry possible. A lot of storylines have built up going into the LAN portion of competition. Team EnVyUs would like a LAN title to cement their dominance and claim the name of "best team in the world" once and for all, while Cloud9 goes in looking to stave off any upsets and try and take back their throne from months ago. Fnatic and Team Solomid both have looked impressive for rather new rosters, and both can certainly make some noise, as evidenced by the qualifiers. REUNITED, Misfits, Creation, and Rogue can finally settle who the best team in Europe is after months of competition. Of course, we cannot forget the biggest storyline of them all: which region will dominate, EU or NA?
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